The last time I posted news was early 2016. Goodness... I've neglected my music for that long. Terrible.

Part of this is because life gets more complicated and more demanding. Part of this is (honestly) because I hate not sitting right with my partner when I'm home which means my music PC, in the office, stays mostly off and far away.

With a view to reinvigorate my music production, I've upgraded my laptop (which is a powerful Asus N552VW) with a 3rd internal HDD - Western Digital Black, 1TB. This is a fast (7200rpm) drive on which I now keep all my virtual instrument data. This way, I don't need to use external drives and I can more comfortably create music no matter where I am.

I hope this will get me making music again since, now, I no longer have an excuse. It's at my finger-tips at all times.

I'll start with some honesty: I've been using cheap, old, not very good headphones for a long time. Sure, they are balanced so they gave a good representation of the spectrum but they are by no means precise... I've used this same pair for maybe 6 years.

Then my Sennheiser HD280s arrived.

Initial reactions: Wait. Wait. Wait. What? You mean I can hear the precise difference between the bass and kick drum now? You mean that the way the voice and guitar sounded muddled was just because of my headphones? What is this sense of... space? Is that... "air"?!

I didn't believe the difference would be so great but... Man I'm so glad it is. Good news though: My old tracks still sound good with the new headphones. PHEW! The headphones are a bit tight - I have a big head and I wear glasses - so I don't know if I could use them for long stretches of time until they're a bit older but otherwise I'm seriously impressed.

Updated 2016-02-07 03:27:29

So I read @Lich's list of gear and it made me realise I haven't tallied up what I actually have recently. I got a bunch of cool stuff from doing reviews on TheAudioSpotlight etc so... here goes! I'll edit if I forget something (currently still WIP). I'll add a wishlist too, so any comments on those things are more than welcome, say, an opinion or alternative suggestion. :)

Sony MDR 7056 Monitoring Headphones (alternatives in this price range welcome, up to £130) - I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD280s in the end after Sony Customer Support screwed me over. WOW! Such good headphones!

New speakers, currently using a cheap Logitec set. It's got me this far though!

New bass: Not decided which yet, but I want something with more umph.

New guitar: A mid-range (£1200) ESP with Seymour Duncan pickups and a Floyd Rose

Updated 2014-08-30 20:30:50

I need to ask myself an important question.

I enjoy singing. I mean, I REALLY enjoy singing and recording vocals for my songs. But now I feel like I can never go back to NOT singing on my tracks. If you haven't noticed, many of my recent submissions have vocals (of varying quality as I work this stuff out). Maybe I'll be fine going back to instrumental tracks when the time comes, especially if someone is paying me to write something, but I don't think I'll ever write another rock or metal track without vocals from now on, now that I have discovered my voice. It's simply fulfilling in a placethat I was never able to reach before.

Updated 2014-08-25 21:17:41

I just broke the main fan on my PC case like a f****** moron. I opened it up while it was on because it was dusty and I wanted to clean it but couldn't be bothered to shut down first. Now I've ordered a new one but I probably can't use my PC until I have the new one. I have a decent laptop too but I can't run all my music software on it. :(